9 December, 2011

Marian Romans ready for a campaign in the east.

I’m very pleased to get a Marian Roman army finished in under a week. It was one that I bought painted in the middle of this year. However, I had to rebase it and reorganize the foot, as there were too many command figures for my liking. I suspect it was the start of an army for a larger set of rules that didn’t get finished and was turned into a fairly rough and ready DBA army. I had to get some more figures for it and some standards. I decided to use some Gladiator Hellenistics for the auxiliary troops. When I first got these I was really unimpressed with the mounted figures, but on closer inspection and after painting them, I really like them, and I think they go with the Freikorp figures very well. In fact, I want to get some of their unshielded Hellenistic cavalry for my Early Successor armies.

The foot commander flanked by two of his centurions.

To finish off the legionaries, I had to paint four more figures. Only one of these was a legionary, the others were a commander and two centurions. I was able to space out the excess command figures by using two musicians on the command element and then having a standard bearer on three of the other elements. There were also four centurions spread amongst the legions, so only one element didn’t have a command figure of some sort!

From the rear.

The legionaries have two shield patterns. I only had to paint two more to bring the army up to the right number.

The four elements of the first pattern. Spot the two shields I painted!

The other four elements.

The auxiliaries are all recruited from the same area. The foot are Hellenistic slingers, archers and thureophoroi. They seem appropriate for an army off to face Mithridates!

The auxilary foot, slingers, archers and thureophoroi.

The mounted are Illyrians and Macedonians; the command element are more Roman looking; and I think that general is the personality figure Julius Caesar. I guess he can have a go at my Gauls some time!

Mounted options, Illyrians, command and Macedonians.

I painted the shield designs by hand to match the rest of the army; they’re fairly rough, but look OK from a distance. I particularly like the Illyrian shields, as they are salvaged from other figures; one is an Essex hoplon, the other was a Gallic shield, I think, but I cut it down.

Another angle.

I used a variant on the wreath pattern of the legionary shields for the command element. I figured attempts to tidy them would only make them worse, so they were done fairly fast.

From the rear.

I’m quite pleased with colours for the cloaks, though I’m not sure how accurately the correction for contrast by Picasa renders them.

6 December, 2011

I’m putting together some spare figures for sale. These figures are mostly unpainted, but a few have been prepped and one element is even finished. They are enough for the Alexandrian Imperial (II/15) army, one with a lot of character. If you’re interested, email me on daviespm AT yahoo DOT com.

For this I’m asking NZ$56.50 (I can supply MDF bases for an additional $3.50 and VVV transfers for the phalangites for an additional $1.50).

Freikorp's Alexander Personality figure

The Companion cavalry come with the Alexander personality figure. For the light horse you can choose either Thracians (HE06) or Skythians (HE41). I’ve just finished painting some of the Thracians and like the way they look.

The elephant is the Early Successor one that I painted a pair of last month. It’s a great model. I’ll throw in a spare archer to put on the base. The artillery is the same as I painted earlier this year, although it comes with only two crewmen. How the psiloi can look painted can be seen here. The Thracians are very nicely animated figures (one each of HE24, HE25 and HE26). I’ve not painted any yet myself, as I’ve not finished any early period armies.

The phalangites are all prepped; they have convex shields made from green stuff, are fitted with Xyston pikes and are undercoated. One element is painted; this element and enough for one more have pants, like some of the Seleucid phalangites. This makes them ideal for morphing, but also could be said to reflect some of the recruitment policies of Alexander in that period.

If you’re interested I could supply some of the figures to allow this to morph into the Alexandrian Macedonian army.